IS has just rejected this for "The execution of isolation contains stray areas that are either too feathered or rough".  This is not an isolation, as explained in the description: "A set of five dry ivy leaves, with natural shadows on white background."  Nevertheless, the white areas are white, and I checked for stray spots. Of course near the shadows you start to have an uneven distribution of "shades of white" that turns into grey.



I thought of sending a note to Scout, but decided to get opinions first.

Regards,
Adelaide

I'm guessing that because it appears to be an isolation that buyers will want to use it as one. It was probably rejected because the reviewer tested its use as an isolated image by selecting all non-white areas and found a significant amount of 'whitish' color still appearing, hence the rejection. On the bright side, this is an easy fix: just do the same test yourself and erase the 'too close to white' areas. If it was me I'd experiment with different leaf colors, too.

Adelaide I have no doubt this is why your image was rejected (this is the result of a levels adjustment layer) , it's nothing to do with whether you used the word 'isolated' or that you've decided to leave the shadows in place (which many people do), you can fix this in 15 seconds using an adjustment layer.

RT,

It was not meant to be isolated anyway.  In your "dark" version there is a lot of "dirt" to the left of the leaves, but this must be due to DT's thumbnail generation - the original has very little non-pure-white on the left.  When examining the JPEG I found some stray areas that do not appear in the TIFF, and I wonder if this is what they complain of.

Cclapper,

I have just checked and I do have "isolated" in the keywords.  They should have complaint of keyword, not execution, in this case.  But this is IS, we never know...

Sharply,

I have experimented before with a duplicate layer in burn blend, the leaves popped-up more, but the shadows had more banding, so I left them this way.

Regards,
Adelaide

PS to RT: I have just attached my original JPEG with the DT thumbnail, both with levels pushed, so you can see DT thumb has some added noise.

it's nothing to do with whether you used the word 'isolated'

I beg to differ, there have been discussions about this many times on forums.

Scout accepted the image today.

good for you! so did he accept it as it was, without you making any corrections? if so, that proves both myself and DT wrong!

FWIW, in my experience if it is anything over bright white background they seem to treat it as isolated.   IMO isolated can still include items that have some shadow.  I like to leave a bit of shadow on full body isolated people shots so they don't appear to be floating in space. 

Agree: I do many isolations and I almost always keep the shadow. I never had a rejections for that reason.

Recently I shoot quite a lot of images on white background. I usually check the quality of lighting the way RT did - reduce brightness and then all non-white areas pop up. A very useful tool in situation like this is the masking method described here:
http://av.adobe.com/russellbrown/AdvancedMasking.mov

It works for me (and I do not attempt to do pure isolation - although the method is good for that too, unless one prefers the us of Pen tool in PS to create clipping paths).

An alternative to CNX2 would be to use Photoshop plug in Viveza, also done by Nik Software. It is the same method that Whitechild has described, just done in Photoshop. That might be useful to people who are not using CNX2 (non Nikon camera owners). Of course CNX2 is better as adjustments are done in the raw file.

What is the advantage of a clipping path if only the original size has it?  Do you think a buyer would choose the larger size because of that?

It depends on the usage. I bought some stuff from LO just to find out that the reviewers didn't check for real isolation. I had to do it all over. I had a chat with some buyers at DT just to find out that "isolated" is one of the most misinterpreted terms in stock. A shadow is not isolated, sorry. In your case I would buy it the size I needed it, and spend 15 mins on isolating the shadows out myself.